Monetary policy and the welfare cost of inflation cannot be studied without some specification of allowable fiscal instruments. Here, feasible policies are implied by the frictions imposed to get roles for money and credit. The model has extreme versions of an above-ground economy and a benign...

We analyze the equilibrium size of the active management industry and the role of historical data---how investors use it to decide how much to invest in the industry, and how researchers use it to judge whether the industry's size is reasonable. As the industry's size increases, every manager's...

This paper contributes to the literature on the finance-growth link by presenting new findings based on a new, larger dataset that improves over earlier studies in its greater coverage in terms of time periods and countries, as well as the incorporation of additional control variables like...

Decision makers lacking crucial specialist know-how often consult with better informed but biased experts. In our model the decision maker’s choice problem is binary and her preferred option depends on the state of the world unknown to her. The expert observes the state and sends a report to...

This paper suggests that institutional factors which reward social networks at the expenses of productivity can play an important role in explaining brain drain. The effects of social networks on brain drain are analyzed in a decision theory framework with asymmetric information. We distinguish...

Temptation and self-control in intertemporal choice environments are receiving increasing attention in the theoretical economics literature. Nevertheless, there remains a scarcity of empirical evidence from controlled environments informing behavior under repeated temptations. This is...

Although the relationship between natural resources and civil war has received much attention, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Controversies and contradictions in the stylized facts persist because resource extraction is treated as exogenous while in reality fighting affects...

This paper introduces three methodological advances to study the optimal design of static and dynamic markets. First, we apply a mechanism design approach to characterize all incentive-compatible market equilibria. Second, we conduct a normative analysis, i.e. we evaluate alternative competition...

The results of a new experimental study reveal highly systematic violations of expected utility theory. The pattern of these violations is exactly the opposite of the classical common ratio effect discovered by Allais (1953). Two recent decision theories - stochastic expected utility theory...

An empirical overview of the UNESCO World Heritage List according to various characteristics is presented. The officially stated intention of the World Heritage List is to protect global heritage. Our focus is on the imbalance of the existing List according to countries and continents. The...